Hubris.co.nz

Once again, I have been unfathomably busy. I know I start every journal entry like this lately, but hey, you get what you pay for, right?

When I left you last, I’d just been to Bar Camp, which was an unconference. Accordingly, I went to a conference on Wednesday at the Stadium. The catering was very average, it was cold in the room, and I was the only person wearing Threadless. Everyone else was in suits. The contrast was very striking. So was the view, as we were up in a corporate box.

I stayed for a couple of networking drinks, and explained myspace and blogging to some people – another contrast to Bar Camp – wow, it’s almost like I should set up a work blog to discuss all these themes – and then hustled my way down the incredibly long Fran Wilde walk to buy $7 worth of cashews (whoops) and be picked up by the faithful Miss Fur who already had her on firmly her jones for Julia and Sam to duet on ‘Good Woman’ at the Cook Strait Social Club. We had drinks and cashews at her house, met up with Karen and then headed down to Mighty Mighty. Handily, Hannah, Anji & her gentleman caller Bambi had already set up camp right near the stage, so we had the best seats in the house, or at least I did, after I stole Hannah’s armchair. We got talking to a lovely American girl named Ingrid, who asked Lisa about gig ettiquite in Wellington.

It turned out it was a particularly awesome intimate gig when Julia came down from the stage to apologise for not learning ‘Good Woman’, and Sam took yelled-out requests (playing ‘Going Fishing’ when that’s Luke’s song, although of course, Sam’s now officially my favourite after that whole bear suit debarcle) and laughed at us when we said “that’s not soon enough!” for an announced October 7 release date for the new Phoenix Foundation album. Emily’s mother talked to me in the bathroom, and I even got up and danced for the last song, which was The Warratahs’ ‘Hands of my heart’. I felt like it was 1989 all over again. All in all, a most excellent excellent night.

On Thursday I made dhal and then got the cleaning bug late at night and I ended up finding about five bags of rotton potatoes, some of which had liquified in the kitchen. Yum! Good smell! But at least it was all cleaned up for the impending arrival of the new flatmates. And of course being virtuous on Thursday meant that I could go out on Friday, so out I went.

I met up with Shirley at Tupelo, and we drank what was apparently their last bottle of red wine, and then had to switch to white. The double Ds came along and were happy that Mary-Kate and Ashley were there too, and eventually we were joined by Bart, before we beat a path to Scopa for pizza.

After that, we followed Bart up to the Mac’s Brewery Bar, which was about to shut (at midnight, what the hell?), and this story happened:

Shame
So tonight Dyl Dave and I go with Bart to the Mac’s Brewery for some goodbye drinks one of Bart’s friends is having. As soon as I get there, some tall boy bounds up to me. “Hi Jo, how’s it going?” I’m all “……… Hi! I haven’t seen you in ages, how are you?” He says he’s good and asks me how I am, so I exchange pleasantries. Then I’m like “So, I haven’t seen you in ages. When is the last time we saw each other again?” and he’s like “a couple of weeks ago at that bar..” and I’m like fuck, is he playing the same game I’m playing? but I suggest the Cross and he says Tupelo, and I smile and nod until he asks me where Bart is and moves off. Later, I talk to Bart, and I’m like “Okay, so who the hell is that guy I was talking to before and why the hell does he know me?”
Bart was all “That’s that guy. You know. That guy”. And I’m like “huuuuuuuuuuuuuh?” and Bart’s like”from my party” and I’m like omg really? I made out with that guy and he came in his pants as he dry-humped me? (Or not so dry). And so I stare at him from across the room and go “damn. he’s really hot. Did I really score him? Really? Because I remembered him being pretty much a loser but maybe I was stereotyping based on the Hawaiian shirt. And I tell Dyl, cos apparently that guy had Dyl’s tshirt, but then we have a disagreement about which guy at the bar we’re talking about, and Dyl’s like “No, it wasn’t that guy, it was that guy!!!!” pointing elsewhere and I’m like fuck, dammit, there goes my thinking that I’d actually score someone hot.

On Saturday morning, I got up at 10 to help Kat & Kane move in, and there was a lot of sitting in the sun talking about wrestling. Karen and Hannah and Anji came over for beers and snacks in the sun, and then I spent the evening doing pretty much nothing at all. Sunday was another blissful day like that, much time spent in bed with Q, putting up new posters and putting away washing. Last night Lisa and her new flatmate came over for dinner. I made my crackling crackle for the first time! And promptly ate most of it before it made it to the dinner table. I blame Smoo for snarfling some whilst carving. Kat brought home organic veges which were very tasty, and naturally we only managed about 15 minutes of dinner before the conversation got filthy. That Lisa, she’s just trouble. But oooh oooh, we set a date and a theme for the next party we’re having: Country Club: Back in the USSR. October 13. Be there!

So, lentils. Damn hippy food. Damn tasty hippy food though. Here’s an easy lentil recipe that you can make to get your healthy eating on. After all, it’s World Vegetarian Day on October 1.

Karen’s Dhal

First, assemble your ingredients:

I like to use as many vegetables as possible at once. It makes me feel better when I eat cheese for dinner for the rest of the week!

Finely dice a couple of onions, some garlic and a thumb-sized bit of ginger, and fry with some mustard seeds and garam masala. Add in a 2 cans of tomatoes, and 2 cups of red lentils, and a can of coconut cream.

In this picture, you can see I’m using one cup of red lentils and one cup of yellow lentils. I’m still not sure how I feel about this variation though

Bring to the boil, then turn down and simmer for around half an hour, adding water or stock as needed to keep it soupy, then add some almond pieces and chopped fresh coriander. You can also add canned chickpeas, diced carrots, celery, kumara, and anything else that strikes your fancy. Enjoy!

So, I went to Bar Camp today, and this is how it was. Accordingly, I must highlight the point that hi, this is Joanna McLeod’s show, and so duh, I’m not going to talk directly about whatever whosesever my political opinions are. Instead, I will present you with my Twitters from today:

1. 15 hours ago: 1 ex-work nemisis, 2 ex work fucks, 3 workmates, 4 threadless tshirts, 5 wellingtonistas
2. 13 hours ago Hadyn says the guy sitting next to him at bar camp was surfing Hubris during a presentation. Awesome! He wasn’t cute though
3. 9 hours ago: Finally have a drink in my hand, phew! Oh, and Hadyn loves Supertramp. Haha
4. 4 hours ago:It is strange when it’s been a million years & a million hours of shit & therapy & life in betwn but u have too many drinks & go “your body &I used to be 1″
5. 3 hours agoAt Lisa’s, in my princes dress, destined for Lani’s party at some stage.”

So then there were drinks at the Loaded Hog, and discussions about me declaring Feminism on the situation, before I got Lisa to pick me up, and eventually we went to Lani’s party and then no taxis showed up and fuck, aaaaaaaaaaaaaargh, but finally I manaeged to get home now, phew!

EDIT: and some more slightly coherent takes on the above information, now that is is morning and my neighbour has woken me up all worried, I can say that Smoo broke a window last night – I’m not sure how it happened cos I was asleep on the couch and maybe he woke me up climbing in it? But consequently the curtain is molesting me now in the wind. And also, my twitters really didn’t do a good job of conveying how many actual useful conversations were held at BarCamp about things that are really very very applicable to my new job. And strangely enough 140 characters didn’t let me say what I meant which was ‘it is strange that there was this level of intimacy with someone that I haven’t had since then, and it was a long time ago, but I got a reminder of it because I saw someone I hadn’t seen for a long time, and we are strangers now and I want it to stay that way, but I want to find that level of intimacy with someone else sometime soon please, where you know their body as well as you know your own, and occasionally you’re not sure where you end and they start’. Yeah. That’s a bit better.

Today I started my new job. I get the most awesome chair ever. It’s all posh and adjustable and sexy. Yeah that’s right, the chair was the most exciting part of my job, except for all the very interesting conversations that I had with people about interesting things and stuff that’s going to happen.

Of course in order to start my new job today, I had to finish my old job last week. I was sad to leave. They gave me a lovely card and a present and said so so so so many nice things about me. We had wine and gossiped and went to Siem Reap with the account manager of the design agency we use who I used to know when I worked at VUWSA for dinner and had more wine and more gossip, and then we went to Mighty Mighty for more wine, and I saw really random graffiti on the wall in the toilet that said “I don’t have any Heroes / they are all useless” on the wall and thought “hey, that handwriting looks familiar” but I wasn’t sure because of the lack of punctuation, and also just the plain randomness of it, so I wrote the phrase on a piece of paper and got others to confirm for me that yes, unfortunately that was my handwriting. D’oh! Don’t remember that at all. Maybe it was post Great Blend.

Anyways, it was a super fun night and a lovely way to end six of the best working weeks of my life. It was – as I said to them – just like a beautiful summer romance. But getting up early on Saturday morning to go to Zinefest wasn’t so fun. My new dress arrived that morning, and I decided to wear it, which wasn’t the best decision I’ve ever made – after I set up my zine table, I went and had breakfast in Doria, then was using the church bathroom when I looked down and was like “JESUS CHRIST!” at the amount of cleavage I was showing, and I was like “oops, sorry!” looking up. And so I put my hoodie back on for most of the rest of the day. Zinefest was kind of fun, talking to new people, but I was so tired that I wasn’t very talkative. And it was strange watching people reading my zines right in front of me. Because I primarily do my dirty-talking to strangers via the interwebs, I’m not used to seeing their faces when they read it. This was much more immediate. But it was nice to see people giving me their hard-earned money, and people asking me where I stock. And now you can read my zines in the Wellington Public Library collection, if you’re that way inclined!

Then I went home for naps, and to tidy up the house, before going to pick up Lisa and Jay and Jasmine who’d already been drinking. We made the house all purty with lights, and the party began. Highlights included the tasty Martina from Auckland showing up, meeting Other Lisa’s very tall boyfriend, having a cute Dutch boy compliment my boobs a lot and then grab them a lot – and then a little while later he fell asleep on Lisa’s shoulder when we took him outside for fresh air. A Scottish brother and sister sang the national anthem together – loudly and a couple of times. Dylan told me he loved me when I “licked my own nipple”. I use quotation marks, because to tell you the truth, and all secretly now, I didn’t actually. You know that Ashley’s tip is waaaaaaaaaaay low down, and I would have had to haul myself out of the halter in order to properly do it (I can’t get close on Mary-Kate) so I settled for dipping my tongue inside my bra, and that satisfied the crowd.Lisa’s crowd sang loudly. The Scots brother broke a glass, the Scots sister broke a chair – admittedly I think it was the already broken chair. But they were hilarious and cute, so it’s okay. Everyone molested Sebastian, who responded by bringing in a live mouse that I had to take outside. I got to meet Anji’s new gentleman caller, Bambi, and Lisa squealed and jumped up and down in glee when I gave her the cake I made:

I also gave her Liam Finn’s I am Lightning but since she already had it, I offered her up my brand new Appetite for Destruction – which she gave me back in the morning saying she couldn’t take it from me. So after we’d cleaned up the house and got pizza from the Med Warehouse, we went to Real Greedy and found her CSS, and I bought The Gossip for myself, woo. And I have my ticket to their gig, so hurrah!

Okay, earlyish night for me tonight, new jobs are exhausting. So much paperwork!

Lots and lots of stuff is going on right now. First and most important to you is that I will be selling my stuff at Zinefest. You should come along, say hi and buy my zines and sugar scrub. And yes, in case you’re wondering, if I slept with you prior to 2007, you will be in 101 Stories but possibly only a very small part. Heh. I said “small part”.

I am so grown up. I sorted out my magazines yesterday night, along with some other form of grown-up activity. I umm ummm okay, maybe I just shivered under a duvet on the couch. BUt you know, I ate vegetables for dinner, so that’s grown up. I wish I had a camera to post a photo of all my Qs in chronological order, their red spine numbers just above the lilac boxes that they’re in, and then there are my Bitch and Busts in pink boxes, along with the sadly finito Jane, Frankie, and Yen. Then there’s a whole shelf full of Metro and some green boxes full of assorted music magazines and “culture” things. And the Next that I was in and the New Idea with Penny’s wedding in it. You do care what magazines I read, you know, because I am sitting here trying to define myself for you. And also making a note for myself in later years to remember that now is when I have decided to put a lot more effort into being a feminist. As long as you define “effort” as “reading the magazines and making sure that I never shy away from the word”. The back cover of the 10th anniversary of Bitch made me cry at the awesomeness of a reader deciding to spend $3800 on buying it to support the magazine. And then when I spent much of the last weekend in bed reading them and Q I also got all choked up hearing Athlete’s ‘Wires’ for the first time, about the singer’s premature daughter, which tapped in to the many many baby thoughts that I have been having lately. But more about that later, perhaps.

We still haven’t found a flatmate. Quite frankly, I’m fucking loving the quiet around here when there’s so much going on in my life. It’s so good and peaceful. But I really can’t afford to keep paying $254 a week in rent, no sirree. The fact that so many people have come over and not wanted it has got me down a little, like WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME? WHY DON’T YOU LOVE ME? But not that down.

I went and saw my counsellor today, for the titular spring-cleaning of my head. I’d really wanted to see her a couple of weeks ago, but she was away on holiday, so I thought I’d go now before I start my new job and work miles away and all. I got the most awesome surprise though, when I told her about my new work, because it turns out that not only do they subscribe to EAP too, which means that I can get 3-5 free sessions if I need them but she’s also based at their offices every other Wednesday to do drop-in appointments. That is so fucking rad. I’m hoping I won’t actually need to see her very often, but it’s so great to know how easy it will be for me if I do. We talked about my abandonment issues, and about my sex life, and my Hard Career Decision to take up my new job instead of staying where I am, and how it’s been freaking me out to get so much praise lately, but how it’s helped me to realise that I’m actually quite good and capable. And we talked about what I need to do in order to keep my head in order (more exercise, and how excited am I about the prospect of swimming in the sea again? SO excited), and when I talked about how I feel like I’m being held hostage by my body lately, like it’s deliberately keeping my periods from me, we talked about how right now I think I will adopt children because I can’t imagine going off my meds and how I am scared shitless of postnatal depression, and she told me that there are very specific medical programmes to help people like me with that sort of issue if I change my mind at a later date. And that was nice to hear.

Tomorrow is the last day of my contract. We’re going out for dinner afterwards. I’m going to be incredibly sad to leave. I will have to treat the whole time I had there as a beautiful summer fling that was too good to last. Stupid taking care of my career and seeking out new mental challenges! Then again, my manager and I went through every single piece of paper on my desk today left over from predecessors and filed them all. My biggest filing pile was ‘R’ for ‘Recycle’. If only I could be so ruthless at home.

On Saturday after ZineFest, Miss Lisa is having her birthday party here. You should come along. The man in a bearsuit on her invitations was so good it made me embarrass myself in front of Luke Buda (yes, it was her MS Paint skills, not the wine that emboldened me). I want to write about what I got her for her birthday and what that meant I bought myself, but I will wait. Then next Saturday I’m going to Bar Camp. I don’t know what I’ll talk about yet, if anything. But seeing as how my new boss is speaking, it’s probably a good idea. And then on the 19th I’m going to another conference. I would kill for a sleep in at this stage. Sunday I plan on staying in bed all damn day. You’re all welcome to join me in my lovely black & white linen.

Right now I’m watching Watch This Space and downloading the tracks I like, which is awesome (I will buy albums if they strike me a lot). I just read a review of Fireworks Night that describes them and the Arcade Fire as “baroque-pop”. Brilliant! And yes, I’m totally going to try and use the word ‘Baroque’ in Scrabulous. But it’s time to go back to Lisa’s Outrageous Fortune DVDs and pull the duvet up, because hot damn, it’s cold. See you Saturday, yes?

Some fucker stole my golden lampshade out of the garage. You’re a fucker, fucker. How did it get there in the first place? Well, that’s a good question. On Friday, I bought a chandelier for the lounge at a store called JoJo that’s on the corner of Victoria and Manners St. I could have bought the same chandelier for the same price in that little store full of shiny things in the Duke’s Arcade, but the scary woman in there scares me too much. If I had a camera, I’d take a photo of it to show you, but of course you know that I lost my camera a couple of Fridays ago.

There wasn’t really a chance for me to have lost my camera this Friday though, as it was terribly civilised. I hiked up to the Herd Street Bra after work to meet up with Tom and Che and MG and their respective partners for a drink. Karen came along and we headed off to New World for dinner supplies and to be picked up by Miss Lisa. We shredded roast chicken and tossed it with chickpeas, feta, avomacado, cashews, red capsicum, spring onions and coleslaw fixings and ate it in piles with walnut bread. And then we watched Captain Tightpants some more, woo hah. I suspect sometimes that I should find a new expression other than “woo hah”, because while it is awesome, it is definitely overused.

On Saturday, I went and had my alonetime brunch at Elements. On my drive there I noticed a filing cabinet inside the Salvation Army op shop in Kilbernie, so on my way back I stopped in and bought it for $35. There was a bit of fanangling to get it into my teeny tiny car, especially since there were still boxes of pottery lying around in it, but with the help of the young guy from the shop we got it there in the end. And I managed to drag it out of my car and into the garage at home, because I am Superwoman. I went to the Meditteranean Warehouse in Newtown to buy a bottle of Amaro for Tom, and also a can of silver spraypaint. Then I had to sand the fucker down, and scrape off old stickers. Hurrah for having turpentine in the house. I am so fucking crafty; craftly like a MONGOOSE. I ran out of silver paint on the third side of the cabinet, so I switched to gold for the handles, and then I spraypainted the round white paper lampshade that’d been hanging in the lounge until I put up the chandelier. But now some asshole’s taken that. Boourns. The cabinet is looking stunning though, with another couple of coats of paint that I raced to the store to buy today after work despite feeling sick sick sick.

Saturday night I got glammed up and hopped on a bus to Sandwiches for Tom’s birthday dinner. They had no pork belly so after Che’s discussion on veal I opted for the vege cannelloni. I sent an update to twitter that said “Last time i was here at Sandwiches i was having the best pashes of my recent years. I miss Shiny! I look even hotter tonite than then though.” Dinner and conversation was very civilised, but I did get an odd look when I suggested to someone that they could fill their attic with dead bodies instead of pink bats as insulation. Apparently that’s not the done thing. When we were leaving, someone grabbed me and hugged me, and it was Bart with Blair, so I made a split-moment decision to go with them instead of going up to the Hawthorne Lounge. We went up to Richard’s apartment on Cuba Street and read catelogues from the Danish Sex Museum and drank and talked shit, then we went to the Southern Cross and wrapped ourselves up in polar fleece blankets cos it was fucking cold outside. When that shut we went to Frindigo, but that was closing a couple of drinks later, so we ended up at Club K, where we did shots of jagermeister and I got dragged onto the dance floor by some girl. Then after Bart and Blair sang a couple of Fall Out Boy songs (haha!), I somehow found myself warbling through ‘Like a Virgin’. I think they turned the microphone off on me, I was that bad. But it was fantastic! And I got home some time after 4am, fell asleep on the couch and then woke up in my bed still wearing my clothes. Needless to say, Sunday was a write-off.

I thought I had more to say today, but I guess I don’t, so I will watch the last two episodes of Season One of Deadwood instead. Tomorrow I’m going to Eagle Vs Shark, and on Thursday is the Great Blend, hurrah! And I’m still looking for a flatmate, grrrrr.

1. Some photos that the lovely Miss Fur took on my request.

My sexy new filing cabinet, all painted up and installed in my room and full of bed linen

My sexy new Sharondalier. Sort of.

(oh okay, she hasn’t uploaded them yet, but when she does, I will edit this)

2. I went to the Great Blend last night. Beforehand, Karen and I met up with Alan and Tom at the Port Cafe where they didn’t have any of the fishes that Karen wanted to eat, but her eventual decision of Bluenose and my Groper were fucking awesome. Their food is so yummy, their decor is so crap. Oh well. At the Great Blend I found the scrumptious Miss Kimberley and she came and sat with us at the back on leather couches where I could drink and giggle and whisper to my heart’s content without bothering so many people.

My text to Martha: RB namechecked me in his opener – “We moved venues so that Jo of Hubris has a better place to swim” I’ve fucked at least 2 ppl here. I was pleasantly surprised it was only two people. I was expecting up to four.

My text to Robyn: Russell Brown just gave you massive shoutouts, woo! xojo

I hadn’t hung out with Alan very much previously, so it was awesome that I got a chance to last night, and hopefully I didn’t make too much of a drunken nuisance of myself with my hilarious commentary – and my yelling anger when the guy from TVNZ showed a total lack of understanding about egovt guidelines (I’m gearing up for my new job already, obviously) although later when he said he was the boss of the captioning division his lack of knowledge made more sense. Alan was shocked when I announced my intention to hit on Damian Christie (He likes banging fat chicks! I should be so in!), and told me I could do better, which is sweet, but awww, poor Damian, haven’t we bashed him enough? At the bar Kowhai Montgomery introduced herself and we had a good talk, and she was awesome. I also saw CJ who used to do the job I used to do, and who’d been on the Silverstripe bowling team in the Wellingtonista league, and so now she is totally my WBLTMNBFFIMDAHTRFL (that’s ‘would be like totally my new best friend forever if Martha didn’t already have that role for life’ in case you’re not down with the kids’ slang). It was funny watching Karen’s face during the talk, because she’s not overly internetly inclined, and she doesn’t even own a TV. Plus she had to drink Chardonnay. I told Tom from TVNZ that I hope that they show all three alternative endings to the Shortland Street serial killer (incidently, I am so loving it – I was totally shocked when Claire showed up dead – really didn’t expect that, though I keep getting Meg confused with the new MILF character so I didn’t care about her, and I knew Jay was going to die when they gave her a long, lingering goodbye) and then babbled something about Idol slash and something more about how awesome Robyn is. He and Damian kept going outside to have cigarettes whenever I went to talk to them, so my seduction plan totally failed.

Eventually someone yelled out that a taxi was leaving, so I ditched Karen totally and ran off with Russell and CJ and Tom TVNZ and ummm someone else was in the cab – maybe Kowhai – and we went to Mighty Mighty. Of course. More drinking was done, and I saw Luke Buda there, and decided it would be an awesome time to congratulate him for his costume in Eagle Vs Shark (which is great and you should see it) – if you’ve seen it, you’ll know that he is in a bear costume in one scene, which is hilarious on so many levels because a) I love me some Phoenix Foundation and b) I love me some bears and c) I love me some people in animal costumes and d) I love me some pretending that Sam Scott is a giant bear, and so therefore e) Luke Buda dressed up as Sam Scott! So awesome! But he failed to see how awesome it was. Strange that, I mean I always love it when drunk girls come up to me and slur at me and act like dicks. Also he said he didn’t get to choose his costume and sounded a little grumpy about it. So luckily there were other people there for me to talk more shit to, and so I proceeded to do that at great length. Yeah.

3. I still haven’t found a flatmate. I don’t understand why not.